OTTAWA (Staff) – At his farm in “the heart of Quebec” east of Montreal, dairy farmer Jean-Luc LeClair watched Monday night’s Quebec referendum returns with divided emotions.
As a dairy farmer with quota for 40 milking cows, he worried about a vote for separation. He voted no.
As a Quebec nationalist who believes his province should be a country, he wanted the separatists to do well. The last time, in 1980, he voted yes.
“I voted no because of the risk,” the Notre Dame du Bien-Conseil said late Monday night. “But it was very tough. I was very divided.”
Read Also
Anti-separatist movement targets rural Alberta
Former deputy premier Thomas Lukaszuk’s anti-separatism Alberta Forever Canada petition campaign expects to run full steam ahead into the province’s farming regions
Several hundred kilometres west, in West Quebec’s Pontiac Valley along the Ottawa River, dairy farmer Chris Judd watched the results with equal anxiety but without the divided loyalties.
“I have to admit I was pretty concerned,” he said as it became clear the vote would produce a narrow ‘no’ victory. “I figure we had $425,000 worth of quota on the line tonight. I’m happy now.”
Judd milks 90 cows at his Shawville, Que., farm. He can look across the river from his farm and see Ontario.
He hopes the narrow federalist victory will be a wake-up call for the rest of Canada that Quebec wants recognition as a ‘distinct society.’
But he also went to bed the night before the Oct. 30 referendum convinced that whatever the outcome, he would not live in an independent Quebec.
LeClair and Judd were two members of the Quebec farm sector that felt most vulnerable in the vote.
Quebec dairy farmers have close to 48 percent of Canada’s industrial milk quota, worth more than $1 billion each year.
Federal agriculture minister Ralph Goodale had insisted that if Quebec separated from Canada, Quebec’s share of the Canadian dairy market would be taken away.
Quebec separatist politicians and farm leaders insisted this need not happen, but clearly it bothered some dairy farmers.
LeClair is a regional representative for Quebec’s Union des Producteurs Agricoles and he was worried.
“From a business point of view, the result will make it that we have less risk,” he said. He predicted that while the country could be thrown into a new round of political crisis and negotiation, calm should remain in the national supply management system.
